Knight Letter No. 11

THE LEWIS CARROLL SOCIETY ■F%>J|5J^^™| OF NORTH AMERICA

■^^f^

Number 11 December 1978

The Fall Meeting of the Society was held at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, on Saturday, October 28th. Despite
difficulties caused by a temporary closure of the airport, an intrepid band of travellers assembled for lunch in Mr Jefferson's
Rotunda, before adjourning to the nearby Macgregor Room of the Alderman Library. In formal business, after brief reports
from the Secretary and Treasurer, it was announced that our next chapbook will be, not the Kitchin letters, as previously
intimated, but the unpublished travel diary of H.P. Liddon, Carroll's companion on his 1867 trip to Russia. Edited by Morton
Cohen, it should be ready early next year. Appropriately enough, the Russian journey was the subject of an interesting
opening paper by Anita Gandolfo. Donald Rackin followed with 'The Return Voyage' — not another travel piece, as it turned
out, but a highly suggestive examination of Alice as a pointer to the underlying chaos of a post-Darwinian age. David Schaefer
concluded the program with a showing of Carrollian movies, including modern animations by English schoolchildren and the
long-lost but excellent version of ^/ice" made by the Edison Co. in 1910. An exhibit of Alician imitations, continuations and
parodies was also on display. Our thanks go to Julius Barclay, our helpful host at Alderman, and to Sandy McAdams,
bookseller and owner of the C&O Restaurant, for a gourmet dinner which ended the day in feasting and fun.

Our next meeting is provisionally fixed for May 19th, in New York. Details will follow at a later date.

D Theatrical and Other Events

On March 10th - 18th last, the Islip Arts Theatre, of Suffolk County Community College, Selden, N.Y., performed ^ /ice in
Wonderland (seemingly an amalgamation of both books) under the direction of Shirley Cox.

Michael Rothwell's American tour with The World of Lewis Carroll took place in September. Our only reports of his
performance come from member Kay Rossman, who saw it in Syracuse, and was sufficiently delighted to want to go and visit
it a second time. Preliminary intimations, and a laudatory review by Andrew Reschke, appeared in the Syracuse
Herald-Journal of Sept. 3rd and 22nd.

In Milwaukee, a musical version of Alice was brought to the Pabst Theatre from October 9th - 20th by the Prince Street
Players, a New York-based children's theatre company. The Milwaukee Journal carried articles on the production (October
6th and 15th) by Dominique Paul Noth, who found the show professionally competent, but unduly episodic and at times
beyond its (mainly juvenile) audience. Though Jay Joslyn, in the Milwaukee Sentinel (Oct. 10th), had no fault to find from
this (or any other) point of view.

Yet another musical Alice, directed by Elizabeth Swados, is scheduled at the New York Shakespeare Festival's
Public/Newman Theater in late Fall.

Considerable goings-on at the Cow Palace in San Francisco, where the Living History Centre puts on, at weekends through
December, a Dickens Christmas Fair. Specially featured this year is a Lewis Carroll Hall of Wonders, where a cast of over 30,

amid life-sized (and presumably twice as natural) Tenniel illustrations, portrays scenes from Alice, and member Dan Singer
(who told us all about it) emulates Michael Rothwell by enacting the role of Mr Dodgson.

The Houghton Library of Harvard University is staging an exhibition of its Lewis Carroll treasures, throughout December.
W.H. Bond, the Librarian, is to give an illustrated lecture, 'Some Adventures of Alice,' at 4:30 pm on Thursday, December
7th.

Member David del Tredici's Final Alice continues to be performed around the country, and was recently given by the
Philadelphia Orchestra, under Eugene Ormandy, at Carnegie Hall in New York. Time Magazine , October 16th (p. 98), carried
a two-column review by Annalyn Swan, with customary praise for the "fantastical and captivating" piece, and for Barbara
Hendricks, the singer-narrator. A recording is apparently planned (and about time too), and rumor speaks of a further
composition on the way, though what possible title it can bear is at present beyond conjecture.

Our own Spring Meeting in Philadelphia was the subject of a
pleasing article in the Bethlehem Globe-Times of August 26th.
Written by Helen Hammarstrom, who accompanied member
Marth Leys to the meeting, it was mildly surprised to find that
we are not all crotchety experts or licensed eccentrics, and laid
proper stress on the diversity of interests and occupations that
the Society brings together.

Alice and the Wasp, as pierformed by the Free Theatre of
Germantown at the Society's Philadelphia Meeting.

Photograph by Sandor Burstein.

O Literary Notes and Notices

Denis Crutch writes from London to pomt out that the New Methods of Scoring for Doublets, mentioned in our account of
the Sotheby, Parke-Bernet sale (KL, No. 10), is not unrecorded or unique, as the Catalogue suggested. It is listed by S.H.
Williams (Bibliography, ii:34, p. 101), although overlooked by Madan. There are copies in the Parrish Collection, and also at
Harvard.

The autumn number of The Book Collector contains an important article by Selwyn Goodacre: 'An Enquiry into the Nature
of a Certain Lewis Carroll Pamphlet', which proves beyond doubt that Some Popular Fallacies about Vivisection is, in its
pamphlet version, a forgery of the early 1920s. Although too late to be attributed to T.J. Wise, or his associate, Harry Buxton
Forman, it seems not unlikely that the latter's son, Maurice, was responsible.

Byron Sewell's LC in American Comic Books, Comix Books and Sunday Newspaper Funny Pages (Chicken Little Press 1978,
limited to 30 copies) provides valuable, if inevitably incomplete guidance to collectors in this esoteric branch of Carrolliana,
where routine bibliographical information is nonexistent or practically impossible to come by. Alice and her associates are
found here in the bizarre company of Batman, Superman, Casper, Raggedy Ann, Pogo and others, and though virtually every
one of the publications listed is (by ordinary standards) ephemeral trash, their collective testimony to Carroll's peculiar hold
on the popular imagination is striking enough to be not unworthy of record.

Our ever-vigilant correspondent Horst Milggenburg has kindly supplied copies of two recent German publications, and details
of others. Die kleine Alice, translated by W.E. Richartz and published by Diogenes Verlag, Zurich 1977, is a small-sized
paperback replica of The Nursery Alice, very prettily done. Alice im Wunderland, translated by Ingrid Strasser and illustrated
by Brigitte Seelbach Caspar, is published by E. Vollmer Verlag of Wiesbaden. LC: Photos und Briefe an kleine Madchen, a
limited edition published by Verlag Weber of Geneva at the high price of DM 270, includes essays by Reichert, Brassai and

Gcrnsheim, and was reviewed in the Kolner Stadt-Anzeiger of August 18th; the Rosenbach Foundation's exhibition was
reported on, with staggering inaccuracy, by L.H. in Welt am Sonntag of September 10th; and Alice figured in a list of the
world's '100 Best Books' (prose works only), concocted by six literary critics for Die Zeit (November 3rd) - though a list
which forgot to include anything by the Brontes, Thackeray, George Eliot or Trollope is not, perhaps, the most authoritative
of guides.

Genesis Publications, of 45 Stoke Rd., Guilford, Surrey, England GUI 4HT, is advertising the appearance, in December, of a
limited facsimile edition (500 copies) of Alice's Adventures under Ground, with a Foreword by Philip Dodgson Jaqucs and
commentary by Morton Cohen. Under such auspices, the quality of the production seems assured, but a pre-publication price
of £89.00, thereafter £ll8.00, makes it a stocking-stuffer for millionaires only. Better buys for the impecunious are the
Panda Prints edition (still discoverable second hand), the Dover reprint at $2.00 or so, and, of course, the original Macmillan
facsimile of 1886.

Morton Cohen's LC's Photographs of Nude Children was the occasion of two separate articles in the New York Times (June
27th and July 2nd). . . As noted by Michael Hancher, Alice achieved mention in a poem by D.J. Enright, published by the
Times Literary Supplement (London) on August 4th. . . Member J.S. Noth, an alert television-watcher and newspaper-reader,
has also sighted an alcoholic modern Alice in dalliance with the Incredible Hulk (CBS, November 3rd) - not half so incredible
as the plot of the episode - and (sober) in advertizing spreads for Sentry Stores and Mayfair Mall in Milwaukee; also
(elongated) as an IBM ad in Newsweek (Sept. 18th), promising an end to inflation . . The same theme surfaced in a Herblock
cartoon in the Washington Post (Nov. 29th), with Alice as taxpayer-consumer being dragged along ('Faster, faster!') by an
inflationary Red Queen.

D Shopping Mall

Circling Suns, of La JoUa, California (seemingly an offshoot of the Green Tiger Press), has produced a 1979 calendar featuring
excellent reproductions of 12 out of the 13 paintings executed by Arthur Rackham for his Alice. The price is $10.00 (postage
and handling $1.85).

Member Andrew H. Ogus, of Paperback Traffic, 535 Castro St., San Francisco, Calif. 94114, sells beautifully made rubber
stamps of Tenniel characters (W. Rabbit as Herald, the Tweedle brothers, Humpty Dumpty and the Cheshire Cat), at $4.50
each for the first two, and $4.00 each for the others (postage and handling $2.00). Detail is amazingly accurate, and (as both
your President and Secretary have found) they are instant attention-getters and great fun to use on correspondence.

The 'Mad Tea Party' belt buckle already referred to in previous issues is made (and very well too) in bronze by Capt. Hawks
Sky Patrol & Novelty Co., who are presumably doing business in mid-air somewhere, since they give no ground-based address.
If anybody knows of one, we shall be glad to pass it on.

Member Kathleen W. Rossman, of the Cheshire Cat Gift Shop, 3 Lincklaen St., Cazenovia, N.Y., 13035, can supply the
Rackham calendar aforementioned; also sets of 6 colored papier mache Alician tree ornaments ($25.00, plus $2.00 postage);
Alice jigsaw puzzles in six designs, large (500 pieces) and small (100 pieces), at $6.00 and $1.50 each respectively ($6.00
minimum order, plus $1.00 postage); and stained glass Cheshire Cat ornaments at $39.50 (with branch, $15.50 extra) plus
$2.00 postage.

D Alice in Academia

As member Irene Berman points out, there are numerous complimentary references to Carroll \n An Introduction to
Language, by Victoria Fromkin and Robert Rodman (Holt, Rinehart, 1974), a textbook on linguistics currently in use at
Lehman College, CUNY.

Philosophers in Wonderland, edited by Peter A. French (Llewellyn Publications, St. Paul, Minn. 1975), is not an attack on a
bemused profession, but a competent and well-chosen anthology of writings on philosophy and psychical research. The editor
is aware of Carroll's interest in this field, and introduces each section with an apt quotation from Alice.

Li Le namci je le grivi ga nu namci li Haddock's Eyes lulu gie nu cutse la Blab Gabransol giu. No, the printer has not gone out
of his mind. That is the White Knight talking in LOGLAN, an artificial language developed in the 60s, which now (so member
Hans Havermann informs us) has its own institute and journal. The Loglanist, whence theabove specimen is taken. A White
Knightish invention, said to appeal to persons "somewhat Lewis Carrollish in temperament", Loglan has next to no grammar
or punctuation, and precious little vocabulary; but claims to be logically powerful, syntactically unambiguous, and devoid of
cultural or metaphysical bias. A sort of cross, it would appear, between symbolic logic, Chinese, Esperanto and Pidgin
English, combining the merits of each and the disadvantages of all of them. Don't knock it till you can talk it, though. When
you can, and only then, will we rename this publication the Blab Gabransol Letter.

The Houghton Library exhibit is commemorated by a booklet, TennieVs Alice, available from the Dept. of Printing and
Graphic Arts at $4.50, plus $1.00 postage . . . Printed Pages, Box 640, Mattituck, N.Y., 11952, offers a miniature abridged
Alice, less than an inch square, hand-bound and gilt, for $15.00 post paid . . . Castle Books, 110 Enterprise Ave., Secaucus,
N.J., 07094 has issued a large-sized Alice, with Tenniel illustrations quite pleasingly tinted in subdued tones by Martina
Selway, at $3.95.

We regret to announce the death, at 84, of Warren Weaver, author oi Alice in Many Tongues and one of the greatest of
Carroll collectors.

The Knight Letter is the official newsletter of the Lewis Carroll Society of North America and is distributed free to all
members. It is edited by Peter Heath, in cooperation with the Society's Editorial Board, and produced by Papercraft Printing
of Charlottesville, Va. Subscriptions, business correspondence and inc^uiries should be addressed to the Secretary, The Lewis
Carroll Society of North America, 617 Rockford Road, Silver Spring, Md. 20902. Submissions and editorial correspondence
should be addressed to the Editor, The Knight Letter, 808 Winston Terrace, Charlottesville, Va. 22903.

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